Lazari
by dottirarinnar
Summary: Jack asks one favour of the TARDIS, but every favour has a price.
1. Chapter 1

_"His name is Alonzo."_

As goodbyes go, this one stings. For all they've been through together, all they've done, all the time Jack waited and all he's had ripped from him, the Doctor is giving him a pickup line to use on a naïve kid. The man Jack used to be would have jumped at the chance: forgiveness and apology wrapped up in one badly-timed gift. He can feel the warmth of his TARDIS key glowing in his pocket, though, and Jack isn't the man he used to be. The man he's become has seen and lost too much. The Doctor can't resist meddling and will find something to distract himself from going wherever he meant to go next. Jack has time.

Jack buys Alonzo a drink but leaves before the bartender returns. He is already forming a plan.

She skitters nervously in his mind, wary of her Fact. He knows if she chooses, the TARDIS can change the shape of her lock, make him a thief rather than a lover, but his key slides in as if greased. She opens her door to him.

"Please," he says, standing within her. "Please."

His thoughts are sharper than his dull supplication: she made him like this, she cursed him.

_Love._

She loved him so much that she brought him back to life and then left him in horror. She owes him.

_Debt._

Jack's memories wade in Dalek dust. Her power destroyed the Doctor's enemies and changed Jack forever.

_Destruction?_

He would render the 456 to dust, let them feel the screams inside his head. He pictures himself an awful god sitting in judgement.

No. He wants destruction, but he'll exchange death for life. Jack fills his mind with calm smiles and dirty laughs and sweet hours spent just kissing. He remembers strong arms wrapped around his body, remembers a quiet presence offering him strength and hope, and that rarest gift of all, acceptance.

Love pours through him so thickly he nearly chokes. He offers the memories up to her. The TARDIS broke him. All Jack wants is someone to put him back together.

_Yes._

Her console opens to him

twtwtwtw

Ianto wakes to cramped darkness and the foul smells of formalin and worse. He cannot see. He feels his clothes soaked through with what his brain sluggishly tells him is secondhand embalming fluid. When he can breathe, he screams, but he can't breathe for long. He is oxygen-starved and delirious, hallucinating in the cold, stinking dark. Suzie talked about this. Jack never does. Did. This is the dark, and he is alone. He must be dead.

Pounding on the padded lid of the casket bruises his hands, breaks bones in his fingers. He loses consciousness, gasping awake again and again, his hands healed.

The screams become constant and unaware of time.

Ianto hears rough sounds high above him. He gibbers and fears at the noises in the dark. The casket trembles. Ianto screams and screams and passes out again.

He gasps awake.

"Jack, please," says a voice. Female. He knows her. Gwen.

"Trust me." Ianto must be dreaming because it's Jack. He forms the word on his dry, hungry lips like a last prayer.

With a mighty creak, floods into Ianto's world. It's too bright. He screams again, only vaguely aware of Gwen screaming in reply and falling back, of Jack bending in over him with his great arms and grateful sobs.

twtwtwtw

Ianto is sane, eventually. Days pass, wrapped in blankets with tea and soft foods brought to him by people who love him. He remembers the time after Jack's own purgatory underground, Jack who spends hours stroking his hair and brushing his mouth against a missing scar.

Ianto is treated like a precious, fragile thing. Jack stays beside him, whispering endearments into his skin, even as Ianto sleeps.

"Who else?" Ianto asks him, three days later, when his mind is recovered and he has tired of tea.

Jack gives him a dopey smile. "There hasn't been anyone else."

"No." He's sane, but coherency is difficult. "Who else did you bring back?"

twtwtwtw

_Her power thrums through him, better than any sensation he's ever felt. Rose was the Bad Wolf, but Jack hasn't written himself across time, merely borrowed the Vortex for one moment. He has lost so much. He can see them all now. He came here for Ianto, to plead for his life. He cannot help thinking that Ianto is but the most recent cut of so many._

_His mind drifts only for an instant. But what is an instant in the Vortex?_

twtwtwtw

The excavator digs deep into the earth. Alice fought them with law and tears, but Torchwood can overrule even her objections. At a meter deep, Ianto can hear the child crying.

Tosh will be next.

twtwtwtw

Jack stands back at a distance, watching Gwen give orders to the workers at the ruins of the Hub. She's huge and tired, lines drawn on her face as they bring her the latest news. The coded tapping is louder now, and they think the breakthrough to the vaults will happen sometime today. Gray is down there, with Harriet and Charles and so many others. Waiting.

His mobile has a snap Alice sent this morning: Lucia snuggling their grandson, miraculously alive, miraculously ten years old for always and ever.

Ianto joins him. Jack takes his unresisting hand, allows himself a moment to admire his own handiwork: Ianto will be young and healthy, will be the quiet support Jack needs when he feels himself falling, will love Jack and be with him forever.

A cheer erupts from the direction of the Hub. The beloved dead are rejoining the world, will live until the end of time.

Ianto, still holding Jack's hand, isn't looking at the scene. Instead, he is staring with sadness and reproach directly at Jack, and this is a memory that will also last Jack until the end of time:

"What have you done?"


	2. Chapter 2

They stand together, but as Jack moves toward the ruins of the Plass, Ianto turns away.

"Wait." Jack can hear the voices, the dead returned to life. He has to go explain. Gwen can greet them, but this is Jack's doing, for Ianto's sake. He expects Ianto at his side. "Aren't you coming?"

Ianto holds up the blue notebook Jack has been scribbling in over the past two days. His scattered memories have yielded the names and final resting places of every person he's loved since arriving here on Earth so long ago. "I'm going to make some calls. I'll be along to help you get the others settled."

He doesn't kiss Jack goodbye.

Jack almost calls him back. He watches Ianto walk off in the direction of his car.

Jack gathers himself and hides behind the mask of his own face as he approaches the Plass. Gwen has gathered the first group of ... Survivors? Rescues?

Immortals.

Charles Gaskell is the first to notice Jack. "Harkness! What the hell is going on?"

At the mention of Jack's name, every head turns. Gerald and Harriet are standing together, clutching hands. Rhydian looks confused. More faces appear as the workers free the formerly-dead from the wreckage. Denys's face lights up as soon as he sees Jack, and like he did when he was alive, he throws his arms around Jack's neck. "I knew you'd find us!"

Jack pushes him away gently, holding onto his arms. "It's good to see you, too. All of you."

Gwen clears her throat. Jack glances at her, and then looks where she's looking. He's known this was coming. He knew it since the moment they pulled Toshiko alive from her grave. The foreknowledge does nothing for the brutal mixture of joy and heartbreak grinding away in his stomach.

"Gray."

He ignores the rolling eyes from Layla, from Charles, and the disappointed look from Denys. None of them understand. Ianto would, but Ianto chose not to be here, and Gwen is a poor substitute.

The explosion destroyed even the cryo chambers, killing Gray painlessly. But Jack had loved him so much.

Gray smiles. There's a flash of shark in the smile, gone in an instant as he embraces Jack. "I knew you'd come, brother." Surprised, Jack holds him, closing his eyes and revelling in the simple joy. Gray is back from the dead, back forever, and he's forgiven Jack. That's all that matters.

"What's happened to us?" asked Alex Hopkins, always the worrier.

Gwen says, "This may be hard to understand. This is the year 2010. You died, and your body was stored in the Torchwood vaults." There are nods of comprehension. Few of those here didn't work for Torchwood in some capacity. She hesitates.

"You're alive," Jack says. "The same miracle that made me what I am has brought you back."

He reads confusion on some faces, horror on the rest, those who knew what his life is. Gray remains blank, watchful.

Alex nods. "All right. We're back from the dead. I've seen you do it enough times. We're Torchwood. Weirder things happen every day." A general assent goes around. Not a soul here doesn't know Jack. He smiles. Going through eternity with his friends might be a party after all.

"The Hub's been destroyed," Charles says. "We'll need to set up a new base of operations." He turns to Gwen. "We will need new identities, and somewhere to board all of us." The order in his tone is clear.

Gerald says, "We're not familiar with this time. Jack, you'll be our point man. Prepare a quick summary of what we need to get up to date."

Gwen says, "Excuse me, but who here currently thinks they're the leader of Torchwood?"

Six hands go into the air.

Gwen meets Jack's eyes. He shrugs.

twtwtwtw

Ianto only makes two telephone calls. Jack's working on getting his authorisations reinstated. Because his death is recent, there's a lot they can pass off as a mix-up, and given the terrible uprisings in the wake of the governments of the world attempting to kidnap so many children, he's hardly the only one "accidentally" declared dead.

Some of the graveyards Jack remembers are historical sites. Ianto calls his contact at the Assembly, and he calls the home office, and then he sets the notebook aside.

It's not a long drive. He's walked between the Hub and this place before.

Most of the cleanup finished months ago, but the site is still closed to the public. Ianto flashes his ID as he's done before, back when they first tried this. He doesn't have much hope, but he has enough, and he has to know.

He promised Toshiko this morning when he visited her recovery room.

Ianto has been alive for a little over a month. Jack took time getting back to Earth, time getting to Ianto's grave, and Ianto should have gone mad there, dying over and over in his own coffin. That he lives now, grappling with his new existence, is what drives his hopes as he breaks into the locked areas of Turnmill.

He pounds on the door to the control room where Owen should be. Three sharp knocks.

He waits. After ten slow minutes crawl by, he knocks again, three times.

Nothing. He'll give it a little longer. Radiation no longer holds any fears for him, but he doesn't need to irradiate more areas if there's no one behind the door. Three last knocks are all he can spare of hope.

"Sorry, Tosh," he says quietly.

As he turns to leave, he hears three knocks from the other side of the door.


	3. Chapter 3

"God fucking dammit," is the first thing Owen says when Ianto finally gets him free from the control room. He says "fuck" several more times as Ianto explains the basics:

- Yes, Owen is once again back from the great beyond.  
>- Yes, if he'll inspect his own chest, he'll notice that means really back, really alive and no longer partially alive but mostly dead.<br>- Yes, it's Jack's fault, as if he had to ask, and  
>- Yes, that means as far as Ianto, Jack, or anyone else knows, they're immortal now.<p>

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"This isn't going to end well for anybody."

Ianto has already considered this. Jack is over the moon giddy with the thought of all his loved ones back, and despite Ianto's concerns, he thinks it will be fine. But while Ianto will be twenty-six for the rest of time, Jack's grandson will be ten, and Jack's ex Lucia will be in her sixties forever. He's not pleased at the thought of meeting all Jack's exes, especially those who died still in love with Jack. Most recent does not mean best beloved, and even best beloved does not and cannot mean only, not with Jack, not ever. Some of those Jack brought back will be elderly. Some will be very young.

Jack never does think things through. It's part of why Ianto loves him.

Owen breaks into his thoughts. "Where's everyone else?" They fall into step as they walk through the abandoned corridors.

"Jack and Gwen are explaining to the survivors from the Hub. Tosh is recovering. She ought to be up and about tomorrow."

"What from?"

"She died when you did."

Several expressions cross Owen's face. Ianto's not sure Owen knew. He's also not sure he didn't know. "She's immortal, too?"

Ianto nods.

"Fuck."

twtwtwtw

It takes three days to acquire the rest of the permits. Jack yells at many important people. Ianto apologises to them when he finishes. Tosh hacks into their laughably-protected systems and smooths the paperwork chain. Jack has asked Gwen to take over the reintroduction of the Hub survivors to the modern world. She's good at it, and he's a coward, making this a perfect arrangement.

He's only spoken to Gray once. Gray doesn't remember the power shutting down when the Hub exploded, only recalls waking up in the darkness to the sounds of the other resurrectees beating in terror on their drawers until they climbed out into their little pockets of pitch-black fear and waited for the workers to rescue them. Jack is sure they died down there but he can't make himself ask the question. He can't even force himself to see the hope in Denys's eyes, or Regina's, or Marco's. Let Gwen handle them, let her answer their questions. God knows Ianto doesn't want to.

Ianto doesn't want to be here now. His face is sharp and shadowed. But he's here regardless, a silent supportive presence beside Jack as the cold dirt moves away from this set of graves.

Jack's afraid.

In the Hub, not all the dead came back. Suzie has rotted in her box, Tilda too. Some of Jack's friends died and are dead and will stay dead, and what if he didn't love Cora after all? How many graves would he unearth only to find another corpse?

He approaches her coffin with dread. His breath catches as he hears a woman weeping, and then he can't rip the lid off fast enough, can't scoop her into his arms despite the smell in the casket and the ruin of the fabric. "Cora... "

She's crying, screaming, and he soothes her tears until she manages a shuddering, "John?"

"I'm here."

Ianto is behind him, giving instructions to the men conducting this excavation. Jack owns several plots in this cemetery, would have buried Ianto here had Rhiannon not fought tooth and nail for custody of Ianto's remains when the government wanted them destroyed, had he the heart to fight for the body with her instead of leaving.

Cora shakes like a brittle seed pod in a strong wind, shakes like she's got the same fever that took her away from him a year after they wed. Jack holds her and whispers gentle words as he helps her stand for the first time in nearly a century. "It's okay. It's going to be okay. We've got a place for you to rest." He leads her to the pavilion they've set up, with chairs and Owen's annoyed ministrations.

He can hear the machine dig deep into the ground again as he sets her down, as Owen introduces himself and takes her pulse. Jack acts as nurse, fetching what Owen needs, giving Cora small sips of a nourishing broth. Who knows how often she died, choked, starved while waiting for him? She keeps a clutch on Jack's hand when she can, follows his every move with her eyes when he steps away.

Ianto shouts when the next grave is close. Jack kisses Cora's head and hurries over. He does notice when Owen bends in and asks, "What d'you think his name is?"

Owen's not going to be pleased when Cora tells him "John Harper."

The next coffin is simpler, and smaller. Jack's terror is back, and it's only going to get worse. Alive, dead, he'll have to go through this again and again, in churchyards where he knows to dig but also in unmarked areas where the barbed wire used to stretch for miles. Men, boys really, clawing their way up through the dirt of France, of Germany, of Africa. He's barely sketched out his list of names for other continents, old loves whose final resting places he doesn't even know. Tosh is running searches.

Ianto holds his hand and squeezes. Jack oughtn't take his strength that way, but he's grateful.

He hears a sound from inside the coffin, and this is no longer about Jack's pain. He wrenches the lid free. The child inside is six years old, and frightened, tears flowing in great gasping sobs, but Jack is here now.

"It's okay," Jack says, voice breaking. "It's going to be okay." He pets fine dark hair, and lifts Robert into his arms.

"Daddy?"


End file.
